Last Podcast On The Left - Episode 449: Alcatraz Part II - The Dark Hole

Episode Date: April 17, 2021

On part two of our Alcatraz series, we cover the history of the prison itself and the abysmal conditions that would consistently break the men of Bird Island.Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0

There's no place to escape to. This is the last talk. On the left. That's when the cannibalism started. What was that? All right, boys. I know for all fact that you're a career poacher and you're a career child molester.

What? Me? I stole money from the president. I'm the smartest man alive. Why have we got the poacher? Because of your size? Because you couldn't relate to a normal size woman so you had to go to a little girl. I don't know why you did that

and I don't know why that's your crime. I'm so mad. But guess what? We gotta get off this rock. We're gonna get off this rock. You gotta look out there. I saw there was a shark. I believe I saw sleeping out by the beach.

We gotta jump on it, put a saddle on it and get off it. But first, they're making pancakes for dinner. And we have to stay for Thursday. Pancakes for dinner when it's delicious and then Friday they have the brunch. Sir, I know I am a registered child molester. But don't you think the pancakes will slow us down

when attempting to swim to the shark? I was just hoping to have one last meal of sweet, sweet pancakes before we enter into our lives as Outlaws. Woo! Welcome to the last podcast of the Left, Everyone. We are Outlaws. I am Ben hanging out with Marcus

and hanging out with Henry. Yeah, bro. I'm Henry. Outlaws. On a steel horse I ride. That's a motorcycle. Alcatraz. Gotta get off this goddamn rack. I've gotta get off of this rock.

And by rock, I mean crystal meth. All right, everyone. Today it's really exciting. We are on to part two of our tale of Alcatraz. Now, before we begin, this episode and the next also use the true crime classic Escape from Alcatraz by J. Campbell Bruce, which is still considered the definitive work

on the history of the prison. So when we last left Robert Stroud, he was at the top of his bird game at Leavenworth Prison, still serving a life sentence in solitary confinement for the murder of a prison guard decades earlier. He loved it there. Yeah. I actually was reading a really emotional part

of looking outward last night, where he was talking about the feeling. And I kind of felt it on the inside of what it's like to be a young man, to be 19 years old and have those doors slam behind you and realize there's no way out of this husk out. Right. It seems to be very harrowing.

It's absolutely horrifying. And of course, when Marcus says Stroud's at the peak of his bird game, that means he is covered in three feet of bird shit. And that's how you know he has reached the top. And from some of our letters from side stories, we found out that actually the really bad smell that comes from bird shit is the fact that a bird's asshole

is both its pussy and its asshole. The cloaca. And so what comes out of it is thicker piss than just the shit. And that the shit doesn't actually smell as bad as the thick piss that comes out mixed with the shit. Oh my goodness. All right.

Lucky male birds, I guess. They got the two for there. When America entered World War II, a large number of prison guards left their jobs to enlist in the armed forces. And as a result, Leavenworth no longer had the resources to indulge Robert Stroud's burgeoning bird business. And besides that, Robert Stroud was also known

to be an extremely dangerous inmate who, as I said, was in solitary confinement because he'd murdered a guard over a trivial argument in a moment of blind rage. And he kept saying how he had a list of people to kill and that if he were to be released, he was going to start going down the list. You never want to be the Chris Jericho of the prison bringing out a list full of names

that's a deep dive reference to pro wrestling. And so, since Robert Stroud was a high-profile prisoner with a history of violence against correctional officers, he was transferred to America's most famous prison where our country put the worst of the worst for decades. Alcatraz! Alcatraz! We got it.

We got to get off of this rock. It means pelican. Does it really? Now to get an idea of what Robert Stroud was facing in Alcatraz and because it's an absolutely fascinating place, let's get into the history of the prison itself as well as what conditions were like by the time Robert Stroud arrived.

What I do like is I did watch a couple of history of Alcatraz documentaries and they always just start, can you even imagine the Native American first washing ashore and seeing the birds of plentiful and just the sheer look of delight in the Native American's faces,

he saw just how many eggs they were to procure. Oh! Eggs and eggs and eggs. Piles of eggs. So many documentaries. Just talk about it. They just looked like, oh, so you're just saying Alcatraz back in the day

was just like a grocery store where they'd go to get their eggs. Yeah, full of eggs. I call those the Ken Burns side quests. Nobody wants to go on except for Ken Burns. Piles of eggs. Piles of eggs. See, while we tend to think of Alcatraz

as an ever-present 20th century American institution, it was only actually used as America's first Supermax Institute for 30 years from the blood-soaked days of prohibition until the early to mid-60s. Now, Alcatraz Island itself had been used as a prison in some form or another for centuries

prior to its use as a Supermax, but its existence always had a singular purpose. Alcatraz was meant for punishment without an ounce of rehabilitation. And not to be confused with the Supermax that popped up in Bayside, of course, from Saved by the Bell. He started with just the max and the burgers were fine,

but wouldn't you believe it? Those high school kids gave him so much money after buying so many French fries, he was able to order or able to buy the Supermax, which had even larger jalapeno poppers, had even larger burgers. I could go on with this bit that's not working. I love it.

I could talk for hours about the Supermax pit that I had in my head and I formulated it, and I was like, this is going to get him giggling, and maybe it didn't work, but the premise is the restaurant business, he did fucking better. I'm not a better fucking restaurant near the Bayside. You've been talking for four minutes.

The joke is the max is the Bayside. A generation ago. We got to get off of this rock. You did this. You're the professional child molester. You're a professional pain child molester. Well, the first European explorer to discover Alcatraz Island in 1775

described it as a bleak barren mass covered in pelicans. And as such, Alcatraz was coincidentally first called Bird Island, but eventually took the more specific name of Alcatraz, which in Spanish, as Henry said, means pelican. It means pelican. It really does. And as we know from the last room on the left,

the pelican is a very dangerous animal. It'll eat anything. It really will. But that rock, the reason why it seemed to be also this perfect place because it was unseasonably cold at all times surrounded by sharks. And it was just this craggy lump.

Yeah. Almost completely devoid of soil or vegetation. Alcatraz Island is simply, as the famous nickname suggests, a big fucking rock just jutting out of the bay. Got to get out of this rock. Yeah, I get it, buddy. I would want to too.

It's 450 feet across and 1650 feet long, with cliffs as high as 75 feet dropping straight into the frigid waters that move through the San Francisco Bay at five knots, which is apparently a lot. Okay. That's a lot of knots. This is, it's much.

Not for my family. Honestly, you don't want a nice two dozen muts. Ooh, get those nice little, ooh, I miss garlic knots. Yeah, I know. That's just as bad as my Super Max. We're on fire today. It is much smaller than I thought it would be though. Yeah.

It's only, it's 450 by 650? It's really, I went to Alcatraz a couple of years ago. It is very surprising how small Alcatraz really is, like how small the prison is, how small the island is, and how small the cells are. The cells are terrifyingly small. Well, it started as a military prison,

but it's where it ended up being like as the, like Arkham Asylum as the ultimate like supervillain prison, real small and silent. Supervillains are notoriously thin. I'm looking at you, Mr. Parks. Yeah, I do have, I have Riddler body. I got Joker body. I'm fucking, I'm ready for it now.

You say Riddler Joker. Unfortunately, I'm looking at Waluigi. It's the same body. It's the same body all throughout. All you need is that stash. I think you're on to something, Henry. Well, in other words, Alcatraz Island wasn't really good for much else besides incarceration.

And of course, egg harvesting. Eggs. Eggs are a plentiful. And God knows. Can you even imagine? It's a Sunday morning. Native Americans are cold, scared of the pelicans. No, for a fact, the pelicans produce some of the most perfect

spherical eggs that Native American put inside of its mouth. All right. Well, the Spanish were the first to use Alcatraz as a prison. They tunneled into the rocks to create dungeons for rebellious American settlers and army deserters. But when those same settlers rose up against Mexico in 1846 during the bear flag revolt, the authorities who had once jailed the Americans

for being a bit rambunctious, were they themselves locked in the Alcatraz dungeons. And of course, the worst army deserter of all time was Gomer Pyle. You couldn't keep that. You couldn't keep a cake in the fridge when he was around. Super Max. Oh my fucking God. I fucking hate you.

I'm trying to make, I'm just trying. Marcus is in studio for the first time. I know, and I'm trying to impress him even more. And I was like, I just wanted him to remember how much fun it was to be around me. And I'm having a great time with you. Okay, because Gomer Pyle would eat all the desserts, so he's the army deserter.

I almost said who could be mad at a person who makes cookies and then I pulled back. I said no, not today. I'm good from now on, I promise. Well, two years later, the Gold Rush hit California, and settlers began sailing from the east coast to the west by going all the way around South America to avoid the long and dangerous trip across the continent

through the American wilderness. How in God's name, going around in a boat, how is that remotely easier? It was much easier. Really? Yeah, it really was. By watching Ken Burns the West, I know this. I'm sorry, I forgot I had slipped into that coma

by the time he was like, and Wyoming. He takes his time. Well, because the crossing of America was very seasonal. If we remember from the Donner Party, there was a very definite cutoff for when you could actually cross over through the Sierra of Nevada and all of America, really. So if you didn't want to wait,

and since there was only so much gold to be had out there, the more impatient settlers would pay to sail all the way around the bottom of South America to end up in San Francisco. I think I would go on the boat. It's also a lot safer. People died fucking constantly because they still didn't have, remember from Donner Party,

they still didn't even know how to get to California. They had two different ways that they could go. There's fucking assholes out there selling paths to California that lead nowhere just into the desert. It was very dangerous. I guess I just don't trust boats. Yeah, makes sense. They're dangerous, too.

Yeah. Well, as a result of the increased ship traffic, when California was admitted into the Union in 1850, Alcatraz became the first U.S. lighthouse and military fort on the West Coast, complete with cannons capable of firing 120-pound cannonballs through the Golden Gate. I would just fucking fire some off.

It would be fun to do it every once in a while. I know there's no reason to do it, but it's fun to shoot a cannon. Why not? They had no reason. No enemy ever came to San Francisco. The war, the battle of Los Angeles. The FBI, Richard Nixon, and J. Edgar Hoover. Because no ships came to attack San Francisco,

the fort was torn down and replaced with a military prison during the American Civil War, although the prison itself was little more than a wooden shack full of Confederate dickheads. I just like seeing them cold. Yeah. In 1867, though, the War Department built a brick building specifically for all types of military prisoners

and officially made it a prison for, quote, long-term military offenders and incorrigibles. Man, you were just going to jail people for having a bad attitude? Yeah, exactly. What are you in for? I'm goth. Incorrigible. I don't like big bang theory.

I hate it. So by World War I, Alcatraz was being used for enemy aliens and espionage agents. Although San Franciscans were lobbying hard to turn it into the West Coast Alice Island following the construction of the Panama Canal. Interesting. You take a place that has been a perennial hellhole

and be like, welcome from Italy. Here's your first trip to America. Go, go, go. I think I went all the eggs. Look at the wolves. They ate so many eggs. Why not? I think that would have been much nicer than the prison they made.

But by 1933, prohibition had been in full swing for years. And as we all know, prohibiting intoxicating substances inevitably leads to massive surges in violence. And the banning of alcohol in America had created a new breed of hyperviolent criminals. And we will get to each one of these at some point in our career at last podcast on the left because some of these guys have,

they are heavy hitters in and of themselves. Pretty Boy Floyd was a very dangerous person. So was John Dillinger. There was John Dillinger. There was Babyface Nelson. There was Bonnie and Clyde and all of their cohorts. Remember, there was like 10 people in the Bonnie and Clyde gang and they were all psychopaths.

There was Machine Gun Kelly, Pretty Boy Floyd, Al Capone, and the Ma Barker gang. And that's just naming a few. And that's not even counting all of the little minions that each one of those had. And while some Americans saw these criminals as heroes, most of them had pegged these people as terrifying monsters. Well, it's the two.

One group is kind of a weird extension, the spiritual extension of the people that were the great outlaws, Jesse James and all those people that were, I think we said last episode, are essentially just Confederate soldiers that never stopped fighting the war. And then the rest of these people came out of that kind of class of criminal.

Robert Stroud even talks about it looking outward, where he calls them essentially super villains, where it's this specific type of lauded criminal that were pop culture people that then had to be treated in a very specific way. Because if you don't, they are technically heroes, so you can't make martyrs of them, which is very easy to do,

but you also have to figure out a way to heavily punish them to figure out how to make sure that other people don't follow in their footsteps. Sure. Because these people really usually weren't too bad about killing just regular folk, but if you were a law enforcement official, you were fair game to be shot in the fucking head.

Oh, yes. And what's more is that when many of these criminals were arrested, sentenced and jailed, they proved to be extraordinarily talented at escaping from prison, or at least they never stopped trying to escape once they were behind bars. And I learned that also from the Robert Stroud book

that actually it was illegal, it was not illegal to escape from prison until like 1864. Like, if you can break through the wall, you're free. You're out because your forefathers, they're wisdom. They said, you can't punish a man for his natural inclination to be free.

Yeah, I actually think they were right about that. I kind of agree with this, yeah. It's interesting, they basically said, if you can get out, you can get out. When we catch you, we can't charge you with more years for just escaping. Yeah, you messed up. Yeah, you let me go.

All right. It's a slippery slope. It's a slippery slope coalition. It is. We should have stopped putting all these slides attached to all the windows here in this prison. Everyone keeps on getting out of here. That's your fault.

I just, like, heard him say, Wee! Oh, that's nice. Well, so J. Edgar Hoover, head of the newly formed FBI, petitioned for the construction and establishment of an inescapable supermax prison. And Alcatraz was handed from the War Department

to the Department of Justice to house some of the very same criminals I just mentioned. It was weird that J. Edgar Hoover referred to it as the creepy sex dungeon he always wanted. Finally. Now, before we even get into the security features of Alcatraz federal penitentiary, it's worth mentioning why Alcatraz was nearly inescapable,

even if you managed to make it outside of the prison walls. Alcatraz Island is more than a mile from any other shore, and the water surrounding it is so cold that hypothermia sets in after only 30 minutes. Or, so some say. What? Others have different opinions. But to put that into perspective,

even a competitive swimmer would have a hard time making the swim in 30 minutes, in even the best of conditions. Can I bring, can I bring floaties? No floaties allowed. You're in a spooky prison. Cookie board. You can't.

Well, we'll figure it out. But really, the geography of the island was the last line of defense, because the First Warden, James Johnston, turned the former military prison into the most secure, and ultimately, the most cruel prison in America. James Johnston is one of those fun guys

that seems to kind of be like a criminal that ended up being in charge of all the prisons. Right, yeah. Well, the nice thing about this prison is, I'm a rock hard every time I walk through it. He did not like humans. He must have enjoyed the suffering of others, honestly. I would say with this, it was,

it takes a sociopath to keep a sociopath in prison. They put a sociopath in charge of Alcatraz. Right. Well, tear gas outlets and gun galleries, as well as gun towers and gun boxes, were placed at strategic areas, and crude metal detectors were scattered throughout the prison in such a configuration

that prisoners walk through them no less than eight times a day. That's just Eddie, the metal sniffer. He's shaking it. He's great. He'll shit every time he sees their smells, metal. Oh, sorry, it's just a fork, huh? Oh, yeah.

Oh, man, you get me out of the, get me out of the bedpan room. I cannot wait until we have technology to replace this shitty knuckle. Well, every possible way out, including the sewer system, was barred up, that even if a prisoner managed to make it to that point, most bars in Alcatraz were round, tool-proof,

ultra-hard rods, impervious to hacksaws. And besides just the fortifications, the man overseeing everything was the armorer. Sealed away in a vault, only accessible from outside the prison, the armorer was the all-knowing, all-seeing God of Alcatraz. Cool.

At least by 1930s standards. Sure. Yeah, how could he see everything without, like, CCTVs? Ah, he could hear everything. Microphones were hidden all throughout the prison. Oh. And they all fed directly to the armory. So he was the first podcast audience.

And the armorer received 12 total inmate counts a day. And the moment an inmate went missing, both the Coast Guard and the San Francisco police were immediately alerted. In the event of a riot or a prison break, the armorer hit an alarm which summoned all off-duty personnel who lived in the tiny Alcatraz town to come help.

Where they would be armed with rifles, pistols, and submachine guns out of the armorer's personal stash. So people act, there was a little enclave, a little community on this small-ass island? Absolutely. How would they, how? I was watching this documentary that it's very similar to the, I mean, you know,

it is very similar to the tiny towns that used to be in Auschwitz. It's the same thing. They built this area where people, guards would live and the warden would live, and it was this... And their families, too. Yeah, their families, kids.

They used to have kids there, and it was this fun balance between the most quote-unquote dangerous criminals in America and children. And these kids... But where would the kids play? It's a bunch of rocks. There's no field.

What school do they go to? Dude, they would go right next to the yards where the prisoners would also play, right? They would go right next to the recess yards, and they said the most treasured thing a kid could find on the island was a ball, was these hard rubber-like handballs. And they said,

they only could have been found inside of the prison, because it was one of the very little things that they sold to people for recess. And this one little girl, she told... She was an old woman that time when she got there, but she told this story as a little girl. She was just like, I was told never to speak to a stranger,

never mind a prisoner, but I remember one time I met the nicest man I ever met, and he was on the other side of the gate. He said, come here, little girl. I'm gonna give you a fresh new ball. And so she's like this big man just like pushed the ball through the fence at her, and he was like, have a good time out there, little girl.

And they just... This is the Wardens' child. But it was this weird area where you wonder if they taught them maybe that prisoners are people, or whether it made them just absolutely afraid of their entire lives. I don't know. Well, either way,

that was nice the prisoner gave her a ball. Oh yeah, he didn't fucking grab her or didn't do anything to his... He wasn't a professional child molester. Okay. Well, one warden said that it was a wonderful little community. He said they didn't even lock their doors at night. Well, because it's a fucking prison.

Yeah. Okay. It said it was safer than San Francisco. I actually do believe that. Yeah, except they're living on fucking Pelican Island. Exactly. The think of the eggs. How many daughters and sons did they lose

to these damn pelicans? Well, as far as who the Alcatraz guards were, each one was handpicked from other federal penitentiaries. Alcatraz was the big leagues. Oh my gosh. These were men who were efficient, intelligent, incorruptible crack shots who were all also trained in the art of judo.

That's fat man martial arts. I love that Steven Seagal. Isn't that what he does? He does judo. Yeah, you use their weight against them. Yay, that's all they did. I added my own weight as well, so they got double weight. And as opposed to other prisons where there was one guard

for every 10 inmates, Alcatraz had one guard for every three. Okay. And eventually, these guards were given colorful nicknames. Of course, this is the 1930s. They all have 1930s nicknames. There was Saltwater, Slaughterhouse, and Weasel Eyes. Cool. There was Big Stoop, Big Stiff, and Big Donkey.

That's you. I don't like the last one, but those other ones are kind of cool. Hey, Big Stiff. Do you like Big Stiff? I love Big Stiff. You don't like Big Donkey? I hate no donkey. I am not a donkey.

I'm a man. I would say that every day when I went to work. And of course, there's my favorite, Ass Kicking Fats. That's me. Hey, how you doing? First name's Ass. Middle kicking, last is Fats.

But concerning that Alcatraz town that we mentioned earlier, an entire community existed just outside of these prison walls. These people had square dances, bridge parties. They had an annual Christmas gala, and it was all put together by the Alcatraz Women's Club. And they even had a fucking ballet once. The Alcatraz Ballet. Wow.

That's extremely interesting. But it also showed there's something about that sense of control of the warden being like, we have this neighborhood of pure peace on one side and then this other, a concrete block of silence on the other side. Well, he's definitely got a mini dictator lifestyle going for sure. Absolutely. But what made Alcatraz one of the worst places on earth for prisoners who were really mistreatment by the guards

or even the cold San Francisco Bay wind? What made Alcatraz a pure hell was the monotony. That's what people kept saying because I was reading an account of Al Capone because we'll talk a little bit about him later on. But they're all saying this. At Alcatraz, the point was to never be abusive. They were specifically trying to say, we're very easy on our inmates here.

We don't hit them. We don't do corporal punishment here. We do light corporal punishment. But what they didn't leave out is what we do though is we treat you as if you are a faceless, like when we talk about Unit 731, like a log. You are a non-person here. We make sure we drain the humanity from you in any way, shape, or form, which I think what it does is it decreases your will to live and to react and to act out essentially.

It's like the movie Pleasantville before it becomes in color, right? Is it starting black and white? Sure. I mean, this is essentially Alcatraz treated inmates as meat to be moved from room to room and had no regard whatsoever for the fact that these men were actual human beings. Now, meat, that's a cool nickname. Meat's a cool name.

Yo, meat, get over here. Actually, there was one guard nicknamed Meathead. That's cool. That works. Life from your grave. Now, in Alcatraz, no one was allowed to talk to each other except to ask for a tool in the shop or to ask for someone to pass the salt at a meal.

And if a man talked, solitary confinement. And I was watching this dude talk about the only thing that he would do because they put you in solitary confinement for 10 days at a jag. That's how they punish you. And he was like, there's only a heck of a lot you could do when you're in solitary. You could only think, you could only pray to anything you could possibly believe in. But also, you play the button game. And he played this button game where he would do...

What's the button game? The button game is terrifying. You take a button off your shirt, you flip it up an air. First, you turn around. Oh, yeah. You flip it up an air, you spin around until you... I mean, because it's also pure black, pure darkness. Then you get on your hands and knees and look for the button.

You know, it kind of works. I know one story about a man in solitary in modern times who he would play with his fecal matter and make little figurines. And then the guards would come and they would force him to smash the fecal matter into the drain that was also his toilet in the middle of the floor. So what I'm saying is things aren't like that much better because I don't even think they get buttons anymore. I think you have to play with your own modeling clay, which is human shit.

Yeah. Now, Warden Johnston claimed that this really, this Silent Rule rule, it wasn't really all that bad because men were allowed two three-minute gab sessions a day in the morning and at night, three minutes to talk about approved subjects. And they were also allowed to talk to each other once a week for an hour on Sundays. Oh, my God. But if the inmates said anything the guards didn't like, solitary confinement. Okay. Back then, solitary confinement was known as the dungeon.

And on Alcatraz, it was more specifically known as the dark hole. Oh, I don't want it. Are we talking about those pelicans again? We talking about that vagina-butthole combo? Solitary cells were brick-walled rooms painted black to increase the sense of hopelessness. And the prisoners were chained to the wall for the duration in the very early days. Little do you know I'm actually in here for being an incorrigible goth. So I'm actually quite enjoying this dog-dog space.

I actually think it's too light in here. I think WandaVision is for normies. Solitary! Well, the cells themselves were damp because they were close to water cisterns. So like the walls would sweat and would make them colder. And the inmates were also routinely deprived of shoes when they were in the dark hole. For sustenance, they got a cup of water twice a day and a slice of bread once a day. And toilet facilities were limited to a bucket that got emptied once every nine days.

All right. You know when your piss becomes solid? It's not. Oh, wow. All right. But again, Warden Johnston insisted that the dark hole was humane because no man was ever left in solitary for more than 19 days at a time. At which point he'd be taken outside for a shower for being put right back in.

It's like how our parents thought that they should all get parent awards of the year because they didn't beat us within an inch of our lives like their parents did. Yeah. An interesting fact about the showers at Alcatraz is that the temperature was always kept at a higher than normal level because officials wanted to ensure that no prisoner ever got acclimated to cold water. Because if you got acclimated to cold water, then you might be able to make it to the shore if you ever got your ass in the bay.

Okay. That's interesting. I don't know if it checks out scientifically, but okay. It's something, but most jails, they gave you cold water. So at this point, I guess that's like one like, I guess I'm glad I'm in Alcatraz. But they also made it too hot to be comfortable. They still made sure it was uncomfortable.

Right. Now, you'd think that the dark hole would be reserved for the worst of the worst, but the smallest infraction could send a prisoner straight to this inky hell for intolerable stretches. If you didn't button up your shirt all the way, you get the hole. What? If you didn't clean your plate at dinner, you skipped a meal for the first infraction,

second infraction, ten days in the hole. What do you want me to do? Play like the piggy game like they did in that Christmas movie, a Christmas story where he's like, how does the piggy eat? Well, technically... How do you want me to finish my plate? What are you talking about? It's horrible food.

Alcatraz was, they had prided themselves in the fact that they had the best food in the prison system. Really? It was one of those weird things that they made it a point that they got as much food as you can handle. You're supposed to be able to eat, eat, eat, eat, eat, but you can't have anything on your plate when you're done. They also served dessert and they would do certain things.

I don't know why they did that, but I know that there was a psychological reason why, but the point was we keep them fed so you can't talk shit about us. Nicer than they do nowadays. We're seeing a lot of inner workings of prisons because people have cell phones. I've been following some people and they do food reviews of the food, and it is disgusting, not human food,

and if you eat it, you just get sick and it's horrible. Anyway, that's nice anyway. Yeah, I mean, in Alcatraz, even decorating your cell in any way whatsoever, even if you just put up a picture of your mother, got you sent to the hole. To be fair, who wants to stare at their mother? I mean, like...

No, get yourself some critical, like some... Who's the supermodel? In the 1940s? Cindy Croft. 1940s supermodel was like... Betty Grable. Penelope Blump. Penelope Blump.

And it's like one woman and she's like huge, and everyone's like, ooh, she's well fed. But as bad as the dark hole was, there were places in Alcatraz that were even worse. At the bottom of the list was the strip cell. The strip cell was a cold, drafty, black painted room with no light in which the prisoner was forced to endure the entire stay nude. But really, what broke men at Alcatraz was what one convict

poetically described as the exquisite torture of routine. Every single minute of every single day at Alcatraz was exactly the same from the moment the inmates woke up at six until they went to sleep at 9.30, accepting Sundays where inmates were allowed one hour in the yard or two hours in the yard if you wanted to skip chapel. Okay. But despite the constant monotony, there was also no peace.

Guards were constantly firing guns in the yard during the day practicing their markmanship. And on foggy nights, of which there were many, fog horns on each side of the island went off every 20 to 30 seconds. But it wouldn't be like every 30 seconds. So there's like a rhythm. It would be either 20 seconds or 30 seconds. And it would just sort of, and so people just went fucking nuts.

And one guy that said that during when the guards were doing target shooting one day, the guy just lost his mind. He goes, would you please stop? Just stop. I bet. Yeah. Honestly, I bet it's one of those and they grind and they grind and they grind you.

That's the point of this. And that's why they thought like this is where we'll put the worst of the worst to make sure that they know we're in charge versus you who've lived this life of your freedoms. Is solitary confinement more quiet? Imagine you could still hear the fog horns and you could probably still hear just like ever so faintly. Now, despite the restrictions, the prisoners still figured out

how to make their own hooch, but the hooch in Alcatraz was the worst hooch I've ever heard of in my life. They made it in the bakery to disguise the smell, but it was still, it was just fucking milk mixed with gasoline. That's like what, seriously dude. That's the shit that Joaquin Phoenix drinks in the master. It's that same stuff, it's that prison hooch. Okay, hold on a second.

What's the science behind this? Milk mixed with gasoline? Gasoline is the gasoline and milk makes it white. Yeah, but how do you get drunk? You're not an automobile. Gasoline can make you drunk. It can make you drunk. It's got the fuel thing.

You can drink it. I mean, it makes you trip balls. It's bad for you. It's that you shouldn't be drinking it. It's bad for you for the PSA. Yeah, it makes you though, like, it's like a poison. It does bad things to you, but if you do it right up to the point before you die, you just get really fucked up.

So the milk cuts the gasoline. Milk cuts the gas, yeah. You know, one of the only moments- It's for flavor. It's for flavor. You're gonna want the flavor. I bonded with my grandmother because we both enjoyed the smell of gasoline. Every time we would stop for gas, my father would yell at us,

but we would just go up there and I would breathe the air. My grandma was like, I love the smell of gasoline. It's like a two-gram boss, so it's a good smell. I adore it. I love the smell of gasoline. I don't want to huff it though. All right, let's move on. Now, the rumor for years was the Department of Justice used Alcatraz as an experiment

in penology to see if turning a person into a silent hunk of meat would have some positive effect on who he was as a person. Oh yeah, man. Every single time you treat a man like a T-bone, he really comes out of it just with such a poetic new view of America. Absolutely. Well, they thought that because they did shit on Alcatraz that they didn't do anywhere else. Really, all Alcatraz did was break men's minds and spirits, sometimes permanently.

In one three-year period, 35 inmates were sent to the Federal Prison Bureau's asylum in Missouri in straight jackets, stark-raving mad. Wow. Others simply committed suicide to escape the rock. I think I'd go full crazy to leave. Yeah. I think I'd do that just to be like... I feel like that type of mumbling and screaming gibberish kind of crazy.

I wouldn't even have to fake it. That would just happen. Yeah. I might just bang my head against the wall until my brain falls out of it. Yeah. That happened quite a bit. That happened a lot of guys died in the hole because they would just start banging their... Because they would usually leave them alone and every few days they'd send by a doctor

to look in and see if the guy was dead or not. And if he was dead, they'd just pull him out and bury him. And that's it. Well, as far as the people who lost their fucking minds went, a counterfeiter named John Static bent the prong of a fork and used it to pry a vein out of his wrist. Yeah. And then once the vein was out, he didn't even cut... He just fucking pried it out of his wrist.

He bit the vein in two. God. To get the blood flowing. Oh my God. All he did was make more money. Yeah. And he was in the process of prying the other vein out of his other wrist when a guard stopped him, but Alcatraz had already broke John Static.

He was transferred to Leavenworth and as soon as he got to Leavenworth, he broke his glasses and cut his jugular vein with a shard of glass. Jesus fucking Christ. Damn. Another inmate named Joe Bowers was an Alcatraz for stealing $16.63 from a store in California. That's it? I mean... But the charge had been bumped up to a federal offense because there had been a post office

in the same building. That was before federal crimes were really a full thing. The main federal crime was fucking with the post office over the banks. Of course. Well, Alcatraz, it was definitely used to put... You know, this was where they put the worst of the worst, but sometimes if a prisoner just happened to piss off the wrong person, they got sent to Alcatraz. Oh, no.

You know, that still goes today. Yeah. If you do happen to piss off a cop, especially in a traffic stop, they'll start going through your whole car and trying to go, like, right you up for something wrong with your light or your fucking... Literally, your light's not being balanced, they can write you a ticket for it, they can do a lot of shit. And then sometimes you don't even have to piss them off, depending on your melanin.

They'll just do that anyway. Yep. And Bowers was being called back from an outside work duty when he bolted for the fence with the obvious intent of suicide by guard. Okay. The CO in the gun tower fired a warning shot, but when Bowers just kept going, guards shot him in the chest and killed him, which was exactly what Bowers wanted. I think that now that I think about it, I bang in your head against the wall, ugh.

But, you know, you go out for the run, you get shot, there's something kind of poetic about it, and maybe you make it, maybe you make it, leave yourself a chance. You never make it. No. No one never made it, or did they? That's a big cliffhanger. Perhaps the most famous inmate bug out was a robber from Arkansas named Roof Purseful. He was working the Alcatraz docks when he very calmly laid his left hand on a block

and chopped off the fingers on his left hands one by one with a hatchet. Ow! Ow! Ow! This one's really gonna hurt. No! That makes sense. And after chopping off all five fingers from the left, he then handed the hatchet to an

inmate who'd been watching the whole thing go down. He then laid his right hand on the block and quite forcefully instructed the other prisoner to finish the job. Listen, I know that this is a thing that you're not super into, but you chop off my fingers right now, and I'm not gonna, I'm gonna raise my voice in a second. Wow. If you don't do this. Even Al Capone, perhaps known as one of the biggest hardasses of the Prohibition era,

had his spirit broken by both Alcatraz and syphilis. Oh, yeah, he did. Perhaps more syphilis than Alcatraz. And coming up the rear, we've got syphilis. And he exited Alcatraz as a mere shadow of his former self. Wow. I read the chapters on Al Capone's stay in Alcatraz in the book Al Capone's The Life, Legacy and Legend by Deirdre Baer, which is actually kind of an apologist view of Al Capone.

Like it's like being like, he was just a family man. People needed their booze. Hey, he's a fun character in Boardwalk Empire. He is, but they were, they, it's interesting because by the time he got to Alcatraz, he was already a pile of walking syphilis. Like he was just a doddering old man who could, which, and he wasn't an old man. Right. He arrived, he was absolutely riddled with it.

There is, that book has a fair amount of debunking in it, which I think is interesting. But the idea, because he was in the Atlanta federal penitentiary, which was the time was the former, the biggest, baddest place where anybody could go. And he got shipped from Alcatraz, he got shipped from there to Alcatraz because they needed to fill Alcatraz with their Rhodes gallery. They literally like, well, we got, we have to have Al Capone here because he's the world's biggest criminal and we have to have him in our biggest, worst jail. Meanwhile, in the Atlanta jail, they're like, he's actually very sick.

It's not the same. He's not like he was. Right. They're like, we need him. He's too dangerous to be anywhere else. So he went to Alcatraz where the hospital facilities were nowhere near where they were in Atlanta. And he just became a shell, deeply afraid of God, did not really, didn't make a heck of a lot of sense.

People in Alcatraz, of course, were like, we got to fucking put a hit on, on Capone while he's here because at first they were afraid to because it's 250 pounds of pure muscle and they were used to him like beating the fuck out of people that would anybody try to challenge him. But they did a couple of like sincere attempts at murdering him that apparently the, the vibe was, oh, he's so diminished. There's actually no point to kill him. Syphilis did its work.

We're good. We're good. And then he spent his last days left or getting out of Alcatraz. His last days in his swimming pool fishing and it looking for fish. Like you would just go and like, you criticize a pole. Like he would cast a pole out to his pool. It's going like nothing today. But that's kind of fun.

Also, we don't, we say, oh, and then he went to Alcatraz. I can't imagine with that journey from Georgia to San Francisco to Alcatraz. That would be a nightmare in itself. It was in a box car, an on air conditioned box car. It was a train that went from Atlanta to San Francisco. They said, um, there was, they were lucky. There was no meeting committee when the train arrived, when they opened up the boxes of the men sitting inside of it for like eight, nine days of just sweating

in this wooden crate. Disgusting. Now in 1937, it became apparent that maybe the rule of silence was a bit much and the inmates, they'd started their own version of the coughing game in the prison cafeteria to protest the policy. Oh, you know the coughing game where everyone starts coughing. Bullshit, bullshit. Yeah, well one person started talking and then the next person started talking

and then everybody in the cafeteria started talking. There wasn't enough solitary confinement cells to punish everybody. So, and then they started doing that day after day after day after day. So like, okay, we can't, they figured it out after four years. I love that deleted entire season of the show Glee when they went to Alcatraz and they tried to silence them. But the song comes out, doesn't it? And then I actually, Warden Johnson came up with this great idea.

It's like, okay, I got this idea. Instead of solitary confinement, what if we have everybody confinement where we put all of them into one cell? That's such a brilliant idea. So humane. So Warden Johnson eased up on the talking rules and introduced a few privileges. He started giving permission to the men to keep little mice as pets. And the men would sometimes put them in their pockets and they'd ride to the mess hall

and they'd give a little bit of food to their little mouse. That's cute as hell. It's sad. Thank God for animal programs in prison because they do wonders for the human being. They really do. But concerning Robert Stroud, even though the rules had loosened up ever so slightly by the time he arrived, he was still not allowed to bring a single bird when he transferred to Alcatraz Island.

Yeah. Yeah, man. Why would you bring, it's like bringing spaghetti to Olive Garden. What are you talking about? It's called the pelican. I know, but he wants his own. The Olive Garden spaghetti, it's not your spaghetti. Yeah.

There's a lot of difference between a pelican and a canary. Yeah, from what people said. What is the difference, Henry? One's got the bigger tits, canary, yellow. Well, for Stroud, the good times were now in the past. And during his time in the segregation block in Alcatraz, he would become even more of a gross weirdo than what he'd been in Leavenworth. And when Robert Stroud was informed that he would be transferred to Alcatraz, he saw it

as a personal attack perpetrated by Bureau of Prison's director, James Bennett. And James Bennett, of course, he was called the Alcatraz talent scout because he personally oversaw every transfer. And he would go around looking for people to put in Alcatraz. Who's a good fit here? Who's the perfect little fit? Who are we looking for? Are we looking for a Terran?

Are we working for a Kenan? And it's very bizarre that he, like the movie Moneyball, started using statistics. And he was, you know, the math doesn't lie. See, if you'll remember from the last episode, Stroud had made a big, embarrassing national stink about keeping his bird business when the BOP was established. And Stroud believed that Bennett was finally getting his revenge by sending him to Alcatraz. But even though Stroud was being sent to a prison where no one ever got special treatment as a matter of policy, the highly manipulative birdman still managed to receive special privileges.

But that's what Looking Outward was. Looking Outward was directly addressed to James Bennett. Yeah. And as this 9,000 page treatise against all prisons and very pro having sex with your brother. How much do you have to anger someone to have them write a 9,000 page book? I don't know. I've seen some of our old iTunes reviews. Yeah.

Those are blurbs. Even though Stroud lost his birds when he went to Alcatraz, which makes the whole birdman of Alcatraz thing a complete misnomer. Damn it. Stroud's cell was still filled with bird books, bird papers, legal pads, and bird magazines. I can tell you what, at least it smelled a heck of a lot fucking prettier. Yeah, absolutely. But just because Stroud had more privileges didn't mean that his life in Alcatraz was easy.

Remember, Stroud was still serving a life sentence in solitary confinement, although he wasn't in permanent residence in the dark hole. Instead, Stroud started his time at Alcatraz in the segregation unit, where he had some connections with other prisoners here and there. But for the most part, relied on guards who absolutely despised him for human interaction. I watched this old timey TV segment of Johnston talking to Edward Murrow, that guy. Really? First of all, back in the day, a cigarette used to last 15 minutes.

They were really good cigarettes, the American spirit brand almost. He just sat with a burning cigarette for the entire segment. And he never even sucked on it, but he was just kept burning and burning and burning. That's so cool looking. But Johnston was talking about it. He's like, as you can see here, we got our segregation unit. It's far more accessible than our solitary confinement unit. And he went and he just was like shaking the bars, shaking the bars.

He's like, it's perfect for rehabilitation. Indeed, it seems like it. Well, the guards were keenly aware that Stroud was an Alcatraz because he'd killed a guard. And most considered him lazy, resistant, obstructive, and above all, extremely dangerous. Hold on a second, guys. How can I be lazy and resistant? Can you tell me that? Can you tell me that?

Really, the only staff member who liked Stroud was the Alcatraz chaplain who described Stroud as friendly, talkative, and studious. Of course, takes one pervert to recognize the other one. Oh my goodness. Now, from his prison cell in Alcatraz, Robert Stroud again worked with his brother. The magician formerly known as the Great Marcus. How? I am not just the retired, average Marcus.

Oh, I need your magic now. You got to get me out of Alcatraz. No, I've quit that. Now I just, I'll listen. Oh, isn't that better than me trying to help you escape? Yeah, it's kind of nice. Well, Stroud was trying to maintain his standing atop the bird world. He'd worked real fucking hard to be a big wig in the bird world.

You know how many people you have to step over to get on top of the canary fucking dynasty? I can't even imagine the competitive nature. Truly, the competitive nature of the bird world must be hyper intense. No, it's mostly just looking through a binocular and going, saw that one. Yeah. But then you need to prove it and then people are going to call you out. I saw it. Did you see it?

Believe all bird watchers. Oh my. Well, addicted to the attention, Stroud essentially began a Kickstarter campaign for the publishing of a third bird book. Okay. Yeah. And he wrote it and he made his case in a series of newspaper and magazine articles titled, I wonder.

I wonder dot, dot, dot. You need to start writing those, Marcus. I wonder. You know, out of all three of us, I feel like maybe us combined could do a great like Dear Kathy or Dear Abby. We could do that. But in the end, it was the great Marcus who footed the bill. With a $15,000 loan, Robert Stroud released a pamphlet called the life of Robert Stroud

except Stroud didn't claim authorship or publishing credit. I just made my retirement savings disappear. Disappear. Indeed you did. Instead, Stroud created a fake bird club called the National Bird Protective League and he released the pamphlet under that name with the great Marcus's home address printed on the back. Okay.

I wish we would have spoken before you put my personal address on the app. Yeah. Kind of doxxed you, didn't you? Yes. Yeah. It's indeed. Written in the third person because most of Stroud's writing was in the third person even when he was writing as Robert Stroud.

The story of Robert Stroud played down Stroud's two murders while his quote unquote intellectual achievements were used to show that Stroud was completely rehabilitated and deserved freedom. Even though Alcatraz was a prison in a constant state of near lockdown, it was not a prison under total control and Robert Stroud, even from a segregation cell, was able to exert his manipulative powers over other inmates without even looking them in the eye. The read I get from Stroud and the way people viewed him because because they talk about it in every Alcatraz documentary I was watching, it's Robert Stroud is always at the very

top of one of the most infamous criminals where when you look at his series of crimes, they weren't that crazy. Oh, it was triple murder. Yes. Double murder and attempted murder. But he's not out on his own. I am so sorry. I know what you're saying.

He's not a fucking criminal mastermind, he just has no impulse control and he's an asshole. But the thing about Robert Stroud is that his aura really preceded him. People were humbled by him because there was a part of it, there's just game respects game where people were like, well, he's managed to figure out how to manipulate all these prison systems, but also there's just the, and you can ask us how that feels as New York Times bestselling authors and someone who's a professional quote unquote author of a book about even if it's fake canary diseases. He had this aura as like this genius that people would go to for their problems like

like how, I mean, RIP Bernie Madoff, oh God, I miss him, I already miss him. I know gone too soon. But Bernie Madoff was also like that in prison where people went to him like and like kiss the ring and like you'd go and help them with their taxes and shit. Of course. And Bernie Madoff's talents in prison would be extremely useful. I mean, at that point, he's a lawyer. He's like everything.

Yeah. You have a college degree in prison. You'll never feel smarter. Yeah. Well, as far as how Stroud calls the ruckus in the prison, he was a famous hypochondriac who had a habit of self-diagnosing every ailment and he also always had a cure to help that ailment. But when doctors disagreed with his prescriptive orders, Stroud would start screaming about

his demands. And when Stroud screamed, he knew just what to say to get every other man screaming along with him. And before long, Stroud was able to destabilize the entirety of his cell block through nothing more than a well thought out hissy fit. And everyone was just screaming about the benefits of hydrochloroquine and hydrochloroquine and it's like, all right, we got it, Stroud. Thank you.

It's weird, he kind of has that ability, that he does have an ability to connect to the other criminals and whip them up. Yeah. Instantly. But Stroud was also smart enough to never involve himself in any sort of physical action and he never once participated in a fight, a mutiny or any of the many, many escape attempts at Alcatraz. Okay.

That was one of the weird things about Al Capone that they discovered eventually was that that was why the faith in him began to erode because people kept didn't understand why he didn't want to be in any escape attempts and they would hit him up, they would try to extort him for money. And he just go like, give him $15,000 Al Capone, you can give me that money and then he's a little like, there's an umbrella, there's an umbrella in my head, my feet are little fishes. And then they have to go like, oh, do I guess we're not getting that money, huh?

No. When nature got to him, he's done. Well, really, the only time Stroud was ever involved in any of the various attempted prison breaks and riots was when he played a small ancillary role in the so-called Battle of Alcatraz in 1946. Battle of Alcatraz is fucking sick. Yeah, this is crazy. And the Battle of Alcatraz was an ill-fated escape attempt involving six inmates named

Bernard Coy, Dutch Kretzer, Marvin Hubbard, Sam Shockley, Moran Thompson, and Clarence Carnes, aka the Choctaw Kid. Man, that's what I want minded. That's my crew. The Choctaw Kid. Yeah. What have you done to deserve the nickname the Choctaw Kid? Me, I want that to be my friend.

I don't want us all to go out to get fajitas and be like, I don't name each one as we sit at this great place up in the valley called Salsa E. Beer and hang out and just come in like, yeah, this is my boy Dutch. What do you want? I want burrito. Yeah, you get it, Dutch. It's very intense when you name your friends like that. This is my buddy Choctaw Kid.

What do you want? I have some nachos. Fuck yeah. He was very aggressive. Now, as opposed to some of the prisoners we mentioned earlier, all six of these men were dangerous individuals with multiple murders on their rap sheets and half of them had been sent to Alcatraz for escape attempts at other prisons. Marvin Hubbard had escaped from a county jail in Tennessee and had been sent to the rock

after inciting a prison mutiny in Atlanta. Moran Thompson had escaped from prison eight times. Damn. Dutch Kretzer had killed a man in his escape attempt and the Choctaw Kid, only 16 when he committed his first murder, had escaped from his last prison by using a hacksaw smuggled into the prison inside a watermelon. Cool. Honestly, that's so fun.

That's just like an Instagram thing now. Now Dutch had already attempted escape from Alcatraz once and he'd been sent to the dark hole for his troubles. But after he returned to Genpop, he joined in on a plan orchestrated by Bernard Coy, who was about to attempt his first prison break. Can I just ask this? You know, I know that things have gotten way too strict and I hate our prison system, but at some point you just got to be like, oh, here's a huge watermelon.

So I guess we're just going to give this to the prison. It looks like this could be almost a suitcase. It almost seems like you get rattled. It's rattled. It's rattled. What's going on in here? Well, we better give it to him because you know how he loves to get watermelons. What is happening?

I don't know. Now the plan itself was exceedingly simple, almost to the point of stupidity. From what I can tell, the four original plotters, Dutch, Hubbard, Coy, and the Chalk Talk Kid, had planned to take advantage of the set schedule of the guards. They'd noticed a flaw in the guard flow in which one guard would be alone and out of sight for a short period of time, so their plan was to knock out that guard, then use a bar spreader to break into the surprisingly poorly watched gun gallery. Once armed, the prisoners would take hostages, pick off the guards in the gun towers with

rifles, and flee to the deck and freedom thereafter. It sounds like a lot of yada yada yadas in there. If it works though, because you just get there, it's like, once we get on the other side, all we need to do is kill all the guards, get through the bay. No surprisingly, they did get as far as knocking out the guard, and they broke into the gallery, and they were able to heavily arm themselves. Can I say this? If you are trying to break out from jail, I do agree that the key is simplicity.

Instead of doing super, super complex actions, it's actually best to find a small hole, hide in a laundry rig. Sure. Try to fit into a watermelon, and then put return to sender on it. Get a watermelon. Get a watermelon. Got it? Fit inside of it.

Return to sender. Wrap yourself in toilet paper, put a little sign in yourself, say, I'm a mummy, please send to Egypt. So many ways to do it. One of my favorite Alcatraz escape attempts was, apparently, the prison had a tailor, so these prisoners would actually make dresses and suits for people. Al Capone was trying to work in the tailor shop, but he didn't have the tiny muscular movements.

The fine motor skills. Yeah. Riddled with syphilis, yeah. But one time, a guard died, and for some reason, the widow thought, okay, why don't I have the prisoners make my morning dress for me, to wear it to the funeral, and so she sent in the order, and one of the prisoners, the prisoner that made the dress, actually put on the dress himself, and made it all the way to the fucking dock, before finally someone ...

Just a lady. Just a lady here. No, just a nice normal lady, who is... I am not a man. Okay, so back to the battle of Alcatraz, they've knocked out a guard, they've got a bunch of guns, they've broken into the gun gallery, and since the first part of the plan went so well, two more prisoners, Sam Shockley and Moran Thompson, they decided they'd just fucking jump in and see how far this ride went. Oh yeah, hopping in a little late, but okay.

But for them, anything was better than staying on Alcatraz, even if it was kind of a half big plan. But as time went on, more guards kept popping up. So each one had to be subdued, tied up, and locked in a cell with the first guard they assaulted. And before they knew it, they'd subdued, captured, and imprisoned 10 Alcatraz guards. Good for them. And they were no closer to moving off sea block than they'd been after they'd captured the

first one. There has to be a finite number of guards, they're not respawning, this isn't an outrider. But it's like 100 guards. So now you've only got through like 10 of them, and they're sitting there, and you're no closer to getting out, and now you're like, are we just knocking out guards today? You gotta do it, it's gonna take a while. So when it became obvious that the two cells they were using for a prison inside the prison could hold no more guards, Bernard Coy lost patience.

Despite the fact that the plan was obviously gonna fail, Coy opened fire on a gun tower from a kitchen window with a 30 yacht six. And once the sirens went off, everything went quickly downhill for both the prisoners and the guards. Oh my God, it's like that YouTube video, when they're all playing Call of Duty and the one guy runs in, it became iconic. Oh, you're talking about the Leroy Jenkins, the Leroy Jenkins, this guy blew their cover. Totally blew it.

Well, he just freaked out. Stop, don't shoot anyone right now, we're trying to be quiet, this is a stealth mission. We gotta get out of here! Because, you know what it reminds me of playing either the Arkham Asylum video game, or any one of the other, I forgot, the Spider-Man game, it's all just about knocking people out and then eventually you just get to the point where you're like, guys it's gonna get in there and I gotta fight everybody! I'm with you, also Spider-Ham needs a game, that's all I'm gonna say.

I'd be fun. But remember, these are all violent criminals, they're not really known for their impulse control. A Dutch Kretzer, once the sirens went off, he demanded a key to the yard from the guards, but when they refused to give him a key, he shot one of them in the stomach twice with a.45 caliber pistol. Sam Shockley, one of the bandwagon jumpers, then loudly yelled, kill every one of these yellow belly bastards, we won't have any testimony against us!

Again, it's a stealth mission. It's like there's a lot more guards than just these ten guards. So many. Well, heeding the call, Dutch opened fire on the guards, and while most survived by playing head, one was fatally wounded, and he became the first casualty in the Battle of Alcatraz. By that point, planes were flying overhead, boats were circling the island, and the marines had even been called in to help regain control of Alcatraz. But Warden Johnston still wanted to regain control himself, so he ordered his guards

to retake C-Block. In the ensuing charge, a guard named Harold Steitz lost a pistol battle with Dutch Kretzer and died, while Dutch came away unscathed, having wounded an additional three guards. By the next day, the marines took over, and they declared all-out war on the would-be escapees. The inmates have been driven back into a utility corridor on C-Block, so the marines drilled holes in the ceiling and dropped in anti-tank shells to flush them out. Guys, I think they're getting pretty serious about this.

I thought it was gonna move more like a wall and a raffle, but it turns out they want us dead now. I'm really sick of subduing people, and now the marines are here. Oh, guys. While the shells were being dropped, a warrant officer named Buckner fired through the gaps in the bars with a Garand M1 rifle. Then the marines dropped an additional 150 hand grenades through the holes, while fighter planes flew overhead for psychological effect.

Honestly, the marines were just having fun. This was an exercise that they've been waiting to do. Low stakes. These are World War II veterans. Real low stakes for them. After that, the convicts contacted the warden looking for a deal, but Warden Johnston refused to negotiate and told them that their only choices were surrender or death. All we wanted was double pizza Wednesdays, and if we could just have more beans in our

burritos on Thursdays, that's all we asked for. I need a protein boost. I just, come on, man. And round pizza. Oh, that's square shit. I'm not. I'm from New York. I'm, come on.

I don't know the square stuff. Now, the convicts knew that death was their fate, no matter what, because they'd already killed two guards, so they chose to fight on, and the gun battles continued throughout a second night until the warden ordered another ceasefire at 9 p.m. In the end, though, the conclusion to the Battle of Alcatraz was somewhat anticlimactic. On the last day, the Marines took over the operation fully, and starting at 8 a.m., they simply moved along a catwalk and methodically fired through each window as they went by, over and over and over again, for hours.

Oh my God. How many, I'm sure we'll get to how many people were killed. The only resistance they got was a burst of gunfire at 9.20 a.m. and three shots at 10.40, followed by coughing and silence. When the Marines retook Alcatraz, Bernard Coy and Dutch Kretzer were found dead still holding their firearms, and Marvin Hubbard was dead as well. Not as many casualties as you think. Interesting.

Five people dead, 13 wounded. Well, it's because it's so well protected. Legitimately, it was an old army fort where everywhere you were going, so they had little gunslit windows, so it's actually very difficult to get at them. They just were cowering, they were just like stuck inside, waiting for it to be over if they weren't one of the three psychopaths shooting at the Marines. Capture. Yeah.

As far as the other three went, they were all captured and quickly executed for their part in the Battle of Alcatraz. Tickle death? Tickle to death? Death by chocolate. Death by chocolate. That's how I would like to go. Great.

Life from your grave. Now, concerning what Robert Stroud was doing during this two-day battle, he was heard to have immediately criticized the escape attempt as, quote, promiscuous. He doesn't know what that word means. Promiscuous. He doesn't know what it means. Yes, he tried to fuck one of the Marines. I know what they're trying to do.

They're trying to go out in that sweet, sweet beach and find themselves a boy. Promiscuous. Well, it's an older use of the word promiscuous. Another use of the word promiscuous is haphazard. Okay. That makes sense. Sure. It's adjacent to our term.

He did, however, manage to save the lives of three inmates because when those 125 grenades started popping off, Stroud quickly closed the solid steel doors to six isolation cells and he saved the life of each man. Only good thing Robert Stroud ever did in his life. You know what? Technically, he's negative one. He gets one more kill. He's only killed two.

He attempted to kill one, but he saved three. He's almost back to good. He's almost, yeah, with murder math. That's not that. He wasn't rehabilitating. I mean, one of his chess partners claimed that Stroud would routinely say during a chess game that if he was released, he would grab little boys and girls off the street, quote unquote, eat them up and kill them because that's what he was owed by society.

That's just chessboard locker room talk. Is that locker room talk? You know how these chess guys are. I love it. They're always consuming the flesh of little girls. They scoop off the strings. I know. And then Billy Bush is there just being like, yeah, I wish I was straight, too.

Yeah, I know. He knows all about how guys talk, doesn't he? A concerning Stroud sexuality. He wrote massive volumes of highly detailed pornography that showcased, as author Jolene Babyak put it, his preference for plump, angelic boys with bright smiles and flashing thighs. Henry, that would be you when you're a little boy. Technically, both of us.

Oh, I was too tall. Two for D. And D for you. And D for me. Cast me. I am so upset. In looking outward, there is this little section where he does talk quite a bit about the doctor checking his asshole for weapons.

The doctor in Alcatraz. Yes. No, this is actually before this. This was the doctor in Leavenworth and he was caught because he didn't even get to Alcatraz. Yeah. They went to go look. They give him a swipe. And then this guy, the guy that was cutting his hair, he would talk about how he would

often go and feel at his buttocks. Like while he was, he would cut his hair a little bit and go and feel his buttocks and feel his buttocks. It was very detailed. Wow. Okay. Well, it's an interesting little addition to your barbershop. The thing is, you got to stand out because anyone can cut your hair, but here at Grab

Ass Barbershops, it's an experience. It's an experience. That's right. Well, building off of his already prodigious pornographic output, Stroud ambitiously declared that he would write the porno story to end all porno stories and he created a highly graphic, near novel involving a family that featured every sexual configuration. What could think of when it came to a mother, a father, a daughter, and a son? The aristocrat.

I can't believe that joke started. Of course it started with a mass murderer and solitary. Of course it did. But thank God Gilbert Govher did it after 9-11. Oh God. It was actually very good. It was. Thank you, Gilbert.

However, Stroud's pornographic writing career ended in 1948, when Edwin Swope became the second warden of Alcatraz Island. Nicknamed the Cowboy, Swope resented Stroud's privileges and confiscated everything Stroud had written in Alcatraz. They called me the Cowboy because I only wear the front part of my pants. Hey, all right. Very fun. Swope then figured he'd make the lives of every prisoner in solitary, including Stroud's

even worse when he introduced something called the Alcatraz Cocktail. Uh-oh. See, every prisoner by law required a certain caloric content with every meal. But Swope directed the mess hall to blend every meal for the prisoners in solitary confinement into a semi-solid mass. And that slurry, the Alcatraz Cocktail, was then served chilled in a cup day after day. Just to further dehumanize whoever was in there. Yeah, you are an animal that eats pig slop.

Oh, not that much better now. No. Now, it didn't take long for Stroud to get on Swope's bad side, and Stroud was soon put into permanent deep lockdown in the second floor prison hospital, completely cut off from everyone except the guards. Now, Stroud's new room was actually larger than most cells in Alcatraz, but it also didn't have a toilet. So for the duration of Stroud's 11 years in this room, he was forced to use a bedpan.

And as a result of the conditions and the isolation, Stroud totally lost touch with reality. You say he doesn't have a bathroom. I say he has open concept. And what do we know from watching HGTV? Everyone loves open concepts. Oh, nothing I love better than just a big drain or a dish that holds all my shit. But Robert Stroud really gets everyone in, you know, in quarantine is going like, oh, like, will I even be able to wear a pants after this?

Well, good question. When people stop looking at you, you lose perspective on your behavior in any way, shape or form, because you don't have to worry about am I eating weird, am I acting weird because nobody's looking at me. Yeah. Did you just go inward? Yeah. And the human mind is a very strange fucking place.

You want to find a nice middle ground between no one looking at you and the whole world looking at you because either way makes you not a human, you want to find right in the middle. Stroud started shaving every single bit of hair from his body because he believed that bald men were more viral. And therefore, if he removed all of his hair from his body, he would become, in effect, an unstoppable superman. Oh yeah, like Gollum, the perfect sexual icon of the early 2000s.

It's the opposite of the biblical story of Samson, hair is supposed to make you stronger. My mom said that my back hair was a sign of virility. Yes, indeed. But because Stroud was constantly shaving, he developed sensitive skin and he'd spent hours pouring skin softeners on his body. God, he must have been like a big old trout. Yeah, and what kind of skin softener did he have? What did they give him?

Bleach or something? Borax. I have no idea. And when he wasn't shaving, he was drinking endless cups of tea or eating endless bowls of chowder. Sometimes he'd eat up to 13 bowls of chowder in a single sitting, so much that he'd look pregnant after the meal was done. I'm a mommy.

You're going to be a mommy to a bunch of soup poop. That's like, I guess he had full access to chowder. Yeah, I mean, I guess once he got put in the deep isolation cell, he got, it's actually very confusing because it does seem like the roles at Alcatraz changed all the time depending on what the guard wanted to do. I see. Stroud kind of became like one of those people that Fiverr spent longer than six months in a hotel where you now are now living in a hotel, where Stroud was put what seemed to

be in sort of like, I don't think it was supposed to be permanent basis, but it became permanent. Then they kind of developed a prison system around him, where because he is this high profile criminal, they can't, I guess, put him in solitary confinement. There's just too much heat on that. So they just kind of leave him in his own little apartment, and then they just kind of feed him whatever he wants. Yeah. I mean, the guards would also interact.

There was one guard who said that he would play chess with Stroud all the time, because he was actually a very good chess player. But if you ever beat Stroud, he always made sure to say, I'm just doing this for fun. Oh, you're having a good time now, Stroud. So he's staying at the prison equivalent of a holiday in extended stay. And you know it's an extended stay because as soon as you get in there, you see advertisements for divorce lawyers, and then as soon as you go into your room, you see the last person, oh, he left one of those frozen burritos for you, and you just see the dent on the bed

where the man sat to contemplate his suicide. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Now, Robert Stroud's story most likely would have faded into obscurity had it not been for the efforts of his brother, the Great Marcus, because I'm back again. Oh my God, you're not a single hair.

See the Great Marcus had long since moved on from magic, but he still had enough showbiz instinct to know that his brother's life story would make one hell of a movie. You say showbiz instinct, I say not naturally having a conscience. So in 1950, Marcus Stroud effectively became Robert Stroud's agent. And before the book Birdman of Alcatraz was even written, Marcus Stroud began drawing up contracts to sell the rights to a Birdman film. Wow. And when Stroud found out about the contract, he contributed his thoughts, and his thoughts

were surprisingly shrewd. He was not unintelligent. No. This man in a weird way was very brilliant. He just was completely hairless and slippery to the touch like a giant chess playing tadpole. In a long letter, Stroud demanded first look and final edit on the script. Really? He demanded a $50,000 signing bonus and 5% of the gross box office, regardless of profit.

Man, he was asking for points and chips. Good for him. Yeah, that's a great contract. Stroud also stipulated that the movie be released no later than September 1st, 1950, and in the event of a delay, Stroud would be owed $1,000 a week for every week of said delay beyond the deadline, in addition to the promised royalties. Oh, so this went right through, right? Oh, well, the Bureau of Prisons still had it in for Robert Stroud.

If you'll remember... That's the only thing that was holding him back. Honestly, it might have been. You could see Buster Keaton signing up for the role. I could see this happening. If you'll remember, the role-bending prisoners from making money could only be rescinded if the warden said it was okay, and there was no way in hell warden Swope was given Stroud anything.

Once the BOP put the kibosh on the deal, Stroud took the opportunity to respond in the most dramatic, manipulative way he could think of, and the half-hearted suicide attempts began. He needs attention. Yeah. Yeah. For the first one, Stroud somehow got a hold of a bunch of pills and swallowed them all at once, but a routine check by an officer saved his life, but that's exactly what Stroud was counting on.

Yeah. Well, he got that from the bunch of pills room. They had to start renaming these things, like make it more secret. Now, rumor had it at the time that Stroud, in addition to swallowing the pills, had also written a lengthy thesis about corruption in Alcatraz on toilet paper. He rolled up the toilet paper and put it in a surgical glove, then tied it up, then swallowed it. His plan was that the coroner, during his autopsy, would discover this thesis and would

tell the truth about Alcatraz. So he literally wanted to shit out of script. I think it's actually a good idea to shit out of first draft. I think so. But I don't know, it would have lasted long enough inside of his gullet. It's pretty irateable. Well, he thought the rubber glove would make it through, and that's why he put it in the rubber glove.

But stomach gas is going to eat through a rubber glove pretty fast. Man, I wonder if J.D. Salinger also used a fiction mule. Well, some of the dumber inmates even believed Stroud when he said that he'd somehow fit a 192,000-word manuscript, which equals about 480 pages, that he'd fit that into a surgical glove and then swallowed it and then left for the coroner to find. I put chapter two in my ass. Oh, wow.

Now, the truth was that Stroud had actually written a small note about how James Bennett, the director of the Bureau of Prisons, how he'd driven him to suicide. And he had put it into a glove and swallowed it. But his survival ensured that the hidden missive simply passed right back into Robert Stroud's bedpan. And then he's pulling it out, and he's looking at it, and he's like, I really could revise this. Yeah.

It's interesting. Usually, you look at your stool, and you're like, don't remember eating that. And he was like, don't remember writing that. That's actually really good. Wow. This is good. Yeah. After that, Stroud half-heartedly attempted suicide once more by slashing himself in

the groin with a razor blade in front of a guard who watched as Stroud stood in his cell naked and bleeding, screaming that he'd be dead in 10 minutes. I'll be dead in minutes. The countdown's begun. Better help me. Now, I'm getting five, four minutes, and I am dead. Very soon to the last minute of the Birdman of Alcatraz's life. Three minutes left, I'm beginning to cough.

After that also failed, Stroud just sort of got back to his life, and he started writing letters to the FBI claiming that he had a fool-proof solution for getting rid of every Communist agent in the United States, but the plan would only be revealed if Stroud would be released. Brilliant. You wait until McCarthy shows up in his freaking jail cell looking for answers. Tell me your plan. But unbeknownst to Stroud, a writer named Thomas Gaddis had been researching his story

since 1949, and Gaddis had been publishing articles about the so-called Birdman of Alcatraz to great acclaim. So the great Marcus saw a workaround to the Bureau of Prison's roadblock and contacted Gaddis directly. He gave Gaddis over 2,000 letters written by Robert Stroud as well as 1,800 letters written to Stroud, and these letters formed the basis for the book and later the movie Birdman of Alcatraz. Wow, that's fucking savvy.

Yeah, it's very savvy. Knowing this, it's really not hard to see where everything went wrong. See, we know now that psychopaths and narcissists like Robert Stroud present a narrative to the world where nothing is ever their fault, and it's obvious that this is how Stroud presented himself in these letters. And there was some sentiment in the public towards this as well, where the myth of him like spread so people viewed him as an aggrieved prisoner that was trying to get out as a rehabilitated man, and no one knew that he was a hairless pedophile that just had waited to spring his

revenge on the world. But he loved birds. Love birds. Hell of a chess player as well. Stroud painted himself as a man fighting against the system, fighting for freedom, justice, and birds. But every misstep in his life had been because he'd either been defending someone's honor or because he was fighting against the system in one way or another.

Gannis also presented the formerly shit-covered Stroud as a man with, quote, meticulous personal habits, because that was how Stroud described himself. Gannis never fucking met Stroud, and Stroud was furthermore held up as a paragon of loyalty because he'd risked everything to support his mother with his bird money. I guess being covered in so much bird shit is meticulous. I meticulously make sure I am absolutely covered in bird shit. Yeah, there's something about that. Not a missing pot of food.

No, all the shit is on you. The ground is actually clean. I want you to check what the doctors call magoo. Do you see but a single hair? No, and it's covered in bird shit. Absolutely. I don't know how they got that there. You must have been playing human island.

Oh, no, I just put it on a chair and I sat on it. OK. Reiter Thomas Gannis also didn't know jack shit about birds, but because all of Stroud's bird books sounded good and because there still wasn't a whole lot of bird literature out there, Gannis portrayed Stroud as a bird genius, despite the fact that many of Stroud's bird recommendations were lethal. It was outsider science. What was one of them again?

Didn't he ask shit? He read a book for how to cure cardinal, how to cure canary diseases and one was to soak pound cake and sherry and feed it to him. Oh, goodness. I mean, he was just putting all kinds of shit together and putting it out there. It's like, this is how you cure your bird of fucking dropsy. Yeah. And all it does is all pound cake soaked in sherry does is cure Dom Deleuze's bad attitude.

And honestly, he never had a bad attitude. Love Dom Deleuze. Just do you think that Gannis was merely a naive dupe? He fully admitted after Stroud died that he was well aware of Stroud's pederasty. I loved it. You loved it? That he neglected to mention it in the book because he felt it might discredit Stroud's overall message of redemption.

But what did we learn from the autobiographer of Cosby? You're going to have to add the chapter. Like at some point people like that was the thing like the Cosby doc came out or the bio came out and was like, you are missing a key component to the story. And then he's like, okay, chapter 33. But despite being completely inaccurate and full of glaring omissions, the Birdman of Alcatraz was still one hell of a read. So regular folk, after reading it, again began writing the president to demand Robert Stroud's

release from prison. And after that, Robert Stroud's star took off for a second time. And every news outlet from Newsweek to the New York Mirror were calling Stroud the scholar of Alcatraz. Oh. They presented him. He was an imminent scientist who was being wasted behind the walls of America's most notorious prison.

I'm happy that Newsweek has always been batshit and saying, I thought it was a publication for a while. Based on this swell of support, Stroud's lawyer submitted an application for executive clemency on the grounds that Stroud hadn't killed anyone since 1920. It's ancient history. They just did they like, that was a while ago. And in the intervening years, he had paid his debts to society with contributions to bird science.

Bird science. He's just killing birds. But after reviewing the facts and Stroud's prison records, the attorney general said, absolutely not. But out of this application, Stroud did claim a victory, because in the middle of 1959, he was transferred out of Alcatraz to the Medical Center for Federal Prisoners in Springfield, Missouri. Oh.

What this meant is that Robert Stroud, by playing a very, very long game, managed to weasel his way out of his solitary confinement sentence, although it did take him 43 years to pull it off. Oh my God. You dress for the career that you want, and if you want to be a pedophile golem, that's what you do. Yeah. But he got himself out, too.

Like he could go and hang out again with people and nurses and doctors, and they were all like, oh, you're really fucking weird. Yeah. And for doctors, that's fun for them. They're like, he's a psychopath. This is going to be a great day for me. It's going to help me on my thesis. Yeah, man.

Once he got there, they started giving him personality test after personality test, and they discovered that despite his advanced age, he was still a significantly disturbed psychopathic deviant who should never, under any circumstances, be released. And I agree with that sentence, but I will also say this, I don't believe in human torture, and I don't think that he was, he still didn't deserve the solitary confinement. No person does, except for the executive producer of Young Sheldon. That is absolutely 100% correct. It is just a war crime against every one of us, except for Love Matt Hobbies on the show

as an old buddy of mine. Oh, yeah. He needs the show, but I just, oh God, oh God, what is happening to all of us? Good for Matt Hobbie, great actor. I mean, I don't believe in solitary confinement, but there was something to be said for keeping Stroud away from the other prisoners. Oh, yes. Because the moment he was allowed around a young inmate, he immediately attempted to

rape him. Yes, absolutely. Just immediately. Middle ground, middle ground. Yeah, middle ground, middle ground. But at this point, not even a diagnosis of incurable psychopathy and an attempted rape could slow down the momentum building behind the Robert Stroud myth. You mean brand.

You know, I think we're going to be a lifestyle one, actually, yeah. In 1962, the movie based on Robert Gaddis' book, Birdman of Alcatraz, was released to rave reviews, huge box office returns, and four Oscar nominations. Wow. Yeah, and Bird Lancaster is one of those old school like classy actors, because he was known because there was reading like one of those like AMC breakdowns of it where he was like the he's known for playing like strong men with a heart. Well, he had just gotten out.

He had just played Wyatt Earp and Gunfight at the OK Corral, but he was brought. Bird Lancaster played heroes. Oh, yeah. And so and he was just like, let's just get to say it's amazing to step in the shoes of the Birdman of Alcatraz and I'll tell you what, get me out of their shoes they are filled with canary shit. Yes. But if you're shrouded, that's a huge compliment.

It was. He played by Bird Lancaster. And Kodjak was in it. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Telly without hair. Telly Sevalos. Without.

Without. OK. He does have hair at one point, I believe. Telly. Technically, he was born without hair. He had hair applied as a younger boy to not be bald up until he was 30 years old. No kidding. Yep.

Birdman of Alcatraz did more to muddy the waters of who Robert Stroud really was more than anything else, simply because it's a great fucking movie. It is. It's considered a classic of American cinema to this day. Now, the public did make one more push to release Robert Stroud following the movie's success, but Robert Kennedy, who was Attorney General at the time, also quietly denied it. And that's what got him killed.

In the end, though, Robert Stroud actually got the romantic and poetic conclusion that he neither earned nor deserved. Wow. The support for Alcatraz had been eroding in Congress for years because it's so fucking expensive. And Birdman of Alcatraz eroded the public's support. And as a result, Alcatraz Prison closed in March of 1963, less than a year after the movie was released.

And Robert Stroud's weird, gross life ended up being partly responsible for the shuttering of the institution where he spent the worst years of his incarcerated life. Then, eight months after Alcatraz met its end, Robert Stroud died as well of a heart attack on November 24th, 1963. Coincidentally, the day before John F. Kennedy was assassinated. Oh, wow. Wow. However, Robert Stroud was not the only factor that led to the end of Alcatraz.

The other was the infamous escape from Alcatraz. Whoa. Yes. And it's with that escapade, along with all the other attempted escapes that will end our series next week. It is wild. Oh. Because I don't know if you know anything about the escape from Alcatraz.

You ever see the Clint Eastwood movie? No, I did not see it. It is. This is one to fucking watch. It's a good, good movie. All right. Great. So we have to be covered.

So we go into action movie territory next week. Oh, very cool. As global warming continues and temperatures change, perhaps the water will freeze over, making it much easier to get to Alcatraz. Wouldn't that be nice if it was ice? No, America is heading into a period of tropicalization. It's actually the opposite. We're about to get really, really warm.

No, but let's talk about this for the next 30 minutes, because this is where we're experts. I know about clouds. Yes. I know about clouds, dude. The clouds are the enemy. All I know is people in Wisconsin are full of glee when they're like, in 50 years, it's going to be Florida here. It's like, well, that's scary, but all right.

You won't have to move. Here is a big announcement. Are we making the biggest of all the big announcement? Here it is. Yay. I don't know how to do a drum roll, but I'm so excited about this. We're selling weaves. It is.

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So thank you all so much for your support. Keep on supporting all the shows here on the last podcast network. If you can go to all the different shows on Spotify and follow them individually, that would really help us out as well. Yes. But yeah. All right, everyone. We'll hope you're doing well out there.

Be safe. Hail yourselves. Hail Satan. Hail again. Magustalations. What a nice time we had at Alcatraz today. Isn't it? It means pelican.

Pelican. That's, that's all I picked up on. Yep. This show is made possible by listeners like you. Thanks to our ad sponsors, you can support our shows by supporting them. For more shows like the one you just listened to, go to lastpodcastnetwork.com.